Surgery

The bloated cell grew: cancerous.
In a soft voice it bellowed
to save     its life,
At any price, and why-not
a deal    was struck:
It asks, I offer, it bids, I execute
and lift     and sustain
it is moral    it is order

Newly, I'm stumped:
a second head, swollen
strains us with my blood.
I can't tell from which,
hence batter with missiles
until it's a dull     skinscape
of a mouth;
It can still yell,
no doubt.

I find the first layer
which is not of brick! lift the film
when nobody's looking:     you're in.
A drill and sledgehammer
will whittle the next.
For that I need stress.
Up the pain as I fall,

There! there's a wedge
(look round, left and right)
Alright let's force it.
Identify and declare I'm pathetic
I live a better life when I'm ascetic
All that potential: where do you spend it?
On magical thinking,
Selectively blinking...
I'm taken apart as I speak.

Yes practicing knives is a thing, but
How else could one
Discover the next life to say yes to?
How else could one
Tell growth the new way to do it?

I take the last vegetable
And chop it up too.

A Note on the Welfare of Reasoning

Managing the flows, barriers, tangles, and calms of the mind is a challenge, as well as necessary, when the reality that consists one's occupation is, other than words or symbols on paper, imagined. A sort of satisfaction is attempted, and so steering away from the madness of involvement and the depression that is the lack of it is advised. As the pair of eyes on top the tower steeply overlooking the vast ocean territories, the suggestion is that consciousness should seek out, locate, and select the urges that power its life, a perpetual bread-baking, as it is. Though the body speaks, convulses from time to time, this optimal all-seeing rearranger of initiative is prized as the person to call up in trouble, the solution to every problem, ill as this might be (hello real world real people!).

If you could, by some strange feat of biology, be able to put a finger on pulsingly urgent desires and postpone them to some other day, perhaps postpone them indefinitely and until death, even making them fade and disappear, what would your life be like? One might begin to find that it is immoral to pursue urges which might harm or even just impact others if one can see these urges to fade (only time can tell whether they will recur). One might begin to find that the only urges that truly matter are the ones that cannot be extinguished easily, or not at all (at least so it might feel).

Refinement is the process of identifying absolutes and checking them with pragmatic opposites. In this case, one notices that it is foolish to cling to upholding that which is transient. We ponder in hidden ways the long-term and the hypothetical, attempting to reason about something, anything, basing plans on what is lasting, searching for the unconditional. The clinging is a defense that one ultimately matures beyond, and, when discovered to be pointless, is washed away as well. One day a part of life, another day not. The more the growth, the more old rules of thumb become obsolete, the more refined the sensibilities, which then break down and regress in illness and crisis, a willow swaying as the drown beckons. All asks to be remade, and the small beginner's games begin anew, stacking and stacking like toy towers until staleness asks them to topple, us entering the stratosphere.

Yes, if we look inwards for constancy, we trick ourselves into losing our footing: all that is constant is a need for footing. Free will is nifty, as I feel how determined my actions are one day, and another day find the space for modification. All that is constant is the parameters of the body, let us seek out those. A mathematician's realm of investigation might grow stellar, yet she will always fail to prevent sign errors. Missing a minus sign in calculations is the only true thing in life!

I ordered ten books the other day. I've very much been awaiting them, and the cliché yet sourceless quote "a room without books is like a room without windows" has been occupying me whenever I wonder where my interests are headed. Still, as I consider this, even a library doesn't feel to me like sufficient opportunity for exploration, or I might be yet to find the fantastical experience of stepping into a library (stone walls and pillars and curled stained wood staircases and innumerable twisting corridors would help), gazing upwards into the sheer space of it to feel: I could spend a lifetime here. Some would advocate scholarly focus, others find it outdated. No windows in a room, no books nor posters nor facebook screens or thing-a-ma-jigs would be satisfactory: it all calls out for more, for more, me sitting here trying to impress the undercurrent, yet falling into inert inaction despite all manifestos, and I claim the value of form, I claim the value of investing into projects (even if anything available feels truly foolish). Simplification is the process of getting tired of building sandcastles in spite of the washing tides, proceeding to give oneself a bit less of one's sensibilities, putting attention elsewhere.

I don't like bullcarp. Let us find as well as build spaces to challenge and channel our intensity. Let us live with others at a common pace as well as at our own speed in our own space. Let us not shy away from involvement, and let us be mindful of its ultimately emotional consequences. Let us gladly tolerate a fair measure of pain and frustration. Let us also be gentle about the idiosyncrasies of our bodies, nerves, and brains. Let us accept obsessions as they might arise and resolve them with tributes to their source, ugly as it might be (it's a learning experience!), while hearing but simply ignoring the excess. Let us resolve explosion anxiety by getting occupied with something challenging and benign while sticking to simplified form and meditating past our overmuch intentions. Still, let us feel, unabashedly and much, and let us think, to put things straight. Let us have fun and play around. Finally, let us write, for it is good.